1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an electronic apparatus and a control panel for the electronic apparatus.
2. Background Art
Recently, many people are becoming conscious and aware of environmental regulation and issue of environmental burden, and it is demanded to reduce power consumption of electronic apparatuses and electric appliances generally. As a result, in image forming apparatuses such as a copier, a facsimile, and a printer as electronic apparatuses that includes printing capability, more and more environment-friendly apparatuses that comply with low power consumption in a normal operating mode and an energy-saving mode are recently purchased, due to consciousness of environmental issues and a viewpoint of saving cost due to electric power consumption.
As examples of the technology described above, a technology to control power supply using secondary batteries charged by solar cells to reduce power consumption during the energy saving mode of the image forming apparatus has been proposed.
For example, there is proposed an image forming apparatus that determines if a user exists around the apparatus according to the change in output of a solar cell to reduce the power consumption of the image forming apparatus, transitions from the energy saving mode to the normal mode based on the determination that the user exists. The image forming apparatus further transitions to the energy saving mode if the image forming apparatus is not in use.
More specifically, the image forming apparatus is provided with the solar cells on the top of a control panel and an automatic document feeder (ADF). The image forming apparatus transitions to the energy saving mode determining that room lighting has been turned off if output of the solar cells falls off, and transitions to the normal operating mode determining that a user exists around the apparatus if output of the solar cell mounted on the control panel falls off.